Two elderly gentlemen, in clothes even older than themselves, are just sitting downwith the outward aid of crooked canes and the inward support of sighson what is presumably a park bench, shaded by mountain laurels, with a swan-pond for a background. The men also carry the venerable pipes of tradition: in this case, heavily crusted corn-cobs. Their speech, very slow and gentle, gives them the sound of impersonal instruments improvising a harmless duo: prosaic music blown into the air at the end of smoke spirals, the re-lighting of pipes necessarily frequent. The only apparent difference between them, traceable perhaps to the unconscious bias of habitual meditation and perpetual comparison of ideas, has reduced itself to a slight wagging of the head on the part of the one as opposed to a slight nodding on the part of the other. Speech and movement coincide almost as caressingly as the effect produced by lips brushing wood-instruments.

[They methodically shake out their pipes and stuff them away. Hodge nudges Henry ever so gently. Henry tries to rise. Hodge has to aid him. They move away haltingly, Hodges stick tapping a little in advance of Henrys, and Hodges arm through Henrys. Henry tries to shake off Hodge, but the latter persists. They move slightly faster.]